The Birds of Australia by John Gould

The Birds of Australia by John Gould is in 7 volumes plus a supplement. It includes 681plates of hand-coloured lithographs, of imperial folio size (559mm x 406mm). Elizabeth Gould was the artist and lithographer for 84 of these with the remainder by H.C. Richter and one by Edward Lear.
Working from Gould's terrace house in central London the artist first prepared a watercolour of the subject bird and then transferred this image to lithographic stone from which multiple copies were run off by the printer C. Hullmandel.

The Birds of Australia is based on the specimens collected, and the observations and sketches made, by John and Elizabeth Gould on their trip to Australia. They left England on 16th May1838 and returned in early August 1840. This trip was a bold and risky venture by Gould but he wished to be the first to publish comprehensively on the avifauna of Australia. Thousands of bird specimens were collected by shooting, preserving and transporting back to London where the art work and publishing was done.

Part 1 of The Birds of Australia was issued on 1 December 1840 (the same year the Goulds returned from Australia), and the last Parts 33, 34, 35, and 36 were issued in December 1848.